Water in the West offers a lively primer on the region's most precious and scarce resource. It collects the best reporting on the subject, drawn from the pages of High Country News, the newspaper that sets the standard for coverage of environmental issues in the West.

Beginning with an exhilarating account of the 1983 Colorado River floods that almost destroyed Glen Canyon Dam and proceeding through recent articles tracking the water quests of Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, and Tucson, this book provides compelling perspectives on the issues and controversies that have roiled water politics in the West over the past two decades. The tensions between the need for water and society's demands that rivers and their wildlife be restored to health are explored in chapters on the Northwest salmon crisis, Glen Canyon Dam, federal and urban water projects, Native American water rights, watershed restoration, and water management.

Readers will find smart, incisive writings that probe the West's efforts to balance competing needs. The contributors to the book — among them activists, scholars, scientists, and many of the nation's finest environmental journalists — offer captivating portrayals of local efforts to solve water conflicts. Together, these stories bring a refreshing focus and clarity to the West's most complex and contentious environmental issue.

The major cities of Texas have developed through a complex web of politics, society, and economics. To describe and explain the state's urban evolution, the contributors to Urban Texas use comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives that explore the relationships among interest groups and voting; religion, reform, gender, and race; civic clubs and suburbs; infrastructure and land development. Texas' cities have experienced boom and expansion, bust and depression. They have also been marked by inequity and disadvantage. Today's cities face not only the limits of a period of economic downturn, but also the inheritance of a history of bias and public-sector inactivity. The story of such forces, challenges the myths that surround Texas' explosive growth and probes the staggering costs that growth has entailed.

Char Miller is associate professor of history at Trinity University, San Antonio, where he specializes in nineteenth-and-twentieth century U.S. social and cultural history. He is the author or editor of three other books and numerous scholarly articles.Heywood T. Sanders is associate professor of urban studies at Trinity University. He has published widely on topics in urban politics and policy.

The Greatest Goodis a compelling photographic history of forestry in the United States. The new edition, which inaugurates the centennial year of the USDA Forest Service, celebrates 100 years of professional forestry in America.

Chapter One reveals how crucial wood was to the livelihood of nineteenth-century Americans, and chronicles the advent of the belief that forestry was the key to producing timber without destroying the forests. Chapter Two explores the growth of the profession, including the creation of the Forest Service, and identifies the controversies that often erupted over new practices and controls. Chapter Three highlights the intensified demand for wood for housing after World War II and the subsequent emergence of environmental consciousness that brought new challenges to the profession. Finally, Chapter Four examines the birth of sustainable forestry and documents how the scientific and technological advances of the past 25 years have enabled foresters to extend the nation s wood supply and restore the land.

Through photograph and word, The Greatest Good illustrates the many contributions that foresters and forestry have made to our society.

Choreophobia is the term coined by Dr. Shay, in this first full-length study of Iranian dance, to characterize the widespread ambiguous and negative reactions to solo improvised dance, the most popular dance form in the Iranian world. This dance form appears to constitute an ambiguous, powerful, and highly negative symbol in Iranian society. The central project of this study, designed for both scholars and general readers, is to identify and analyze what factors currently contribute and have historically contributed to the ambiguous position solo improvised dance occupies in an Iranian context. This is reflected both currently and historically in attempts to ban its public performances. In spite of the negative reactions solo improvised dance can evoke, nonetheless it is also loved and performed throughout the Iranian world, emphasizing the ambiguity that accompanies its performances in various social contexts. The author draws a portrait of solo improvised dance by detailing its movement practices and describing and analyzing the aesthetic and creative impulses utilized by performers of the genre. By showing the ways in which solo improvised dance shares important formal aesthetic and creative elements with other Iranian expressive forms such as calligraphy, music, and traditional theatre through the use of geometry and improvisation, the author demonstrates how dance is firmly linked with other Iranian art forms. Shay addresses the topic of historical evidence for this dance genre concentrating on how dance appears in visual art forms such as the Persian miniature and the limitations of the visual arts as a source for historical reconstruction. He describes the Iranian world providing the historical, cultural and social contexts for the study. Several authors have posited Islamic attitudes as the single reason for negative reactions toward dance, an assumption that Shay questions. Using several dance events as examples, the author proposes a model for describing and analyzing the elements that constitute choreophobia, arguing that such a model may have wider implications in the study of dance.

Endangered ecosystem or renewable resource? How we feel about forests has to do with more than trees. This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the history of forestry in the United States, exploring the impact of the discipline on natural and human landscapes since the mid-nineteenth century. Through important articles that have helped define the field, it assesses the development of the forestry profession and the U.S. Forest Service, analyzes the political and scientific controversies that have marked forestry's evolution, and discloses the transformations in America's commitment to its forested estate. American Forests highlights the intersection of the political, social, and environmental forces that have determined the use and abuse of American forests. It examines changes both in the assumptions that have defined forest management and in the scientific approach to-and political justification for-timber harvesting in our national forests. It sheds light on the ongoing debate between utilization and conservation, addressing arguments from environmentalists, the timber industry, sportsmen, and politicians while exploring the interaction between public opinion and public policy. It provides sharp insights into the most important players in the politics of forestry, from George Perkins Marsh and Berhard Fernow to Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt. And it addresses issues as wide-ranging as budgeting, clearcutting, and the regulation of livestock grazing on national forest lands. This multifaceted volume draws on the insights of scholars in conservation and ecology, economics, history, law, and political science to make a definitive contribution to the study and practice of forestry. By both clarifying and extending recent debate about the political purpose, scientific character, and environmental rationales of forestry in America, it will help define the place of forests in our future.

Through the pages of Environmental History Review, now Environmental History, an entire discipline has been created and defined over time through the publication of the finest scholarship by humanists, social and natural scientists, and other professionals concerned with the complex relationship between people and our global environment. Out of the Woods gathers together the best of this scholarship.

Covering a broad array of topics and reflecting the continuing diversity within the field of environmental history, Out of the Woods begins with three theoretical pieces by William Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, and Donald Worster probing the assumptions that underlie the words and ideas historians use to analyze human interaction with the physical world. One of these - the concept of place - is the subject of a second group of essays. The political context is picked up in the third section, followed by a selection of some of the journal’s most recent contributions discussing the intersection between urban and environmental history. Water’s role in defining the contours of the human and natural landscape is undeniable and forms the focus of the fifth section. Finally, the global character of environmental issues emerges in three compelling articles by Alfred Crosby, Thomas Dunlap, and Stephen Pyne.

Of interest to a wide range of scholars in environmental history, law, and politics, Out of the Woods is intended as a reader for course use and a benchmark for the field of environmental history as it continues to develop into the next century.

Excerpts from the correspondence of a pioneer missionary to Hawaii who played a controversial role in the Islands' history. This text records the crucial period when much of the indigenous leadership chose to convert to Christianity and may correct the generally negative caricature that survives in 19th- and 20th-century depictions of Bingham's work (such as Michener's Hawaii).

Offers new insights into the so-called martyrdom movement that occurred in Cordoba around 850AD. It suggests that Eulogius, who witnessed and recorded the martyrdoms, recast both the events and the ideal of sanctity to make the Cordoban martyrs appear more like their ancient Roman counterparts.